No Subject

[Antipaganda]

We are at war with Terrorism. We have always been at war with Terrorism. <br><br>This is the first time I've read 1984 all the way to the end, and I finally understand it, and why it's so important. Winston did lose, he lost entirely, and it was the most complete loss that is possible. This was important, because it sticks in the mind. Orwell understood how to get to people's emotions, ironically, but he used this knowledge for good. <br><br>Now it will be much harder for those who want absolute power to get it, because first they'll have to make us forget 1984. I don't mean consciously, because there are very few people who actually want that sort of power consciously and with true dedication. But there are a lot more people who unconsciously think of a world where they, and "their kind of people" are in power" as very desirable, and it subtly drives their actions. <br><br>After all, with cold, hard, unflinching logic alone, it is very difficult to defend the idea of human rights. To do that you must appeal to people's basic sense of right and wrong, which is rooted in our evolutionary instinct to be nice to one's little group, one's clan, one's own special bunch of monkeys. <br><br>Now, one might suppose that this monkey morality could never be killed in us, because it is so completely basic to our makeup. However, as technology grows more powerful, there will cease to be a limit to a sufficiently determined psychopath's control over human nature. <br><br>I see 1984 as a real possibility when the necessary level of technology is reached. So the only way that we can be sure it won't happen is to remain alert at all times to signs that society and technology is heading in that direction, and to work as hard as we can to make people everywhere smarter and more aware of its danger. <br><br>The only hope lies in the proles, in 1984 as now; the key to stopping this from coming about is spreading the necessary inoculating concepts through the general population: human rights are sacrosanct, the government is not your friend, and education is God. <br><br>In 1984, the party's rule will one day be destroyed; either by a sufficiently large natural disaster to completely collapse "civilisation", or by a revolutionary genius among the proles who happens to escape being spotted by the Thought Police until he is old enough to understand why he must avoid them entirely.<br><br>But this might take tens of thousands of years, and all that time will be universal madness, violence and pain. We owe it to our descendants not to let that happen. <br><br>(By the way, it is obvious by the end of the novel that the Thought Police in the Ministry of Love can literally read thoughts. O'Brien was simply too magically aware of what Winston was thinking there, towards the end, to explain away by body language or psychology.)